Last Night
by UESider84
Summary: A/U. Modern day. On a train ride from New York to Boston, journalist Anne Boleyn meets CEO Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say, is history.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: Last Night**

**Author: UESider84**

**Summary: **A/U. Modern day. On a train ride from New York to Boston, journalist Anne Boleyn meets CEO Henry Tudor. The rest, as they say, is history.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything except the words in this story.

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Anne Boleyn was standing on a train platform at Pennsylvania Station. She was remarkably beautiful and regal: her long, curly black hair rolled down to the small of her back, her pale feet in a pair of six inch heels, and her pale hands clutched a crocodile skin purse. The kind of purse that a doctor would have carried one hundred years ago on home visits to his patients.

Her eyes gazed intently on the board above her head with its flashing red letters. In her free hand, she was holding a ticket for a train to Boston that would supposedly depart in the next half hour. The board spelled out the same thing that it had for the last forty minutes. The train was delayed in Washington D.C.

She walked over to one of the ticket windows and placed her ticket in front of a middle-aged woman who wore bright red spectacles.

"Can I help you?" the woman asked.

"Yes," Anne replied in her soothing alto voice. "I need to get to Boston by eight o'clock tonight and my train is delayed in Washington."

"You want a transfer?" the woman asked as she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

"Yes," Anne sighed. "If that's at all possible, I would be eternally grateful."

The woman turned in her swivel chair towards a computer that was standing next to the white-washed walled. Anne watched her as she typed in a series of numbers and letters. She scanned the results with her finger until she stopped at bottom of the screen. She looked up towards Anne, smiled gently, and asked, "Would you like to take the express train?"

"Sure," Anne smiled.

"Can I have your ticket?" the woman asked as she swiveled back to the window.

Anne slid the stub into a small metallic tub located underneath the window. The woman picked it up and went back to the computer. The furious typing resumed. Three minutes later, she handed her a new ticket. "It leaves in fifteen minutes from Platform 16," she informed Anne. "If you want to get there before it leaves, I suggest you get a move on."

"Thank you," Anne replied looking down at the ticket. Then she looked up at the smiling face in the window, "First class? I didn't ask for an upgrade."

"It was the only seat left."

She said goodbye to the kind woman and flew through a crowded hallway filled with passengers. She tottered among tourists and hikers carrying backpacks taller than their heads, smartly dressed businessmen in pin-stripes suits, teenage girls texting their boyfriends on their cell phones, children whimpering to their mothers about lost toys, and numerous other New Yorkers that made up the DNA of this city that many considered to be the center of the world.

She did not look at them, but she knew that they were not that different from the others she had met on the flight this morning from Heathrow or those crowds of faceless, nameless persons she had seen on the Paris Metro two weeks before. Although they called themselves French, American, or English, they were still members of the same family: the human family.

Anne continued running until she saw the number 16 high above her head. She made a sharp turn to the right. The platform was crowded with more people moving in various directions. There were conductors in blue and gold uniforms who looked over the tickets and stamped them. There were also some porters who carried the luggage to a special car in the back or wheeled elderly women and men towards the cars while the elderly ladies and gentlemen whispered their thanks.

She looked down at her ticket and pushed her way towards the front car of the train. The conductor stopped her at the steps. "Can I see your ticket and identification, please?" He asked courteously.

She handed it over. He looked it over with a flash light, glanced down at her ID, and placed them back in her outstretched hand.

She smiled and walked up the steps. Inside, everything was in flux. As she passed compartment after compartment, she watched those privileged members of the first class car making themselves at home. They pulled out their iphones and ipads, their ipods and laptop computers. There was a furious clicking and a soundless whirring. Sometimes, a voice would filter through an open compartment door: "Yes, John, that's right. The meeting is tomorrow afternoon. Right. I'll see you then."

She found her compartment towards the back. There were three seats on each side and a small metal table in the middle as well as coffee cup holders in the arm rests. A sign on the arm rests sternly warned the passengers about that the train company would hold the passengers accountable if they spilled coffee all over the leather seats.

Calmly, she placed the crocodile skin bag over her head. She turned on her iphone, put the headphones in her ears, and closed her eyes as the soft post-rock music rolled in waves over her body.

She heard someone open a door, enter, and sit down across from her. In her sleep, she turned her face towards the sun. She heard the other person do the same thing. She resisted opening her eyes. After the day she had had yesterday, the last thing she wanted was another pointless conversation about the weather, the mess the American government was making in Iraq, or whether she had read the latest Sophie Kinsella or Anne Rice novel.

She drifted in and out of consciousness for a good half hour until she finally opened her eyes. The train was moving through the Bronx and was headed towards Connecticut. The sun was playing in the windows of various tall buildings, the water towers were clothed in gold, the sky was a deep sapphire blue.

"Gorgeous afternoon, isn't it?" a man's voice called to her.

"Yes," she said turning her head in its direction.

"Have you ever been to Boston?" a ruddy-haired man in a pin-stripe suit with deep-set brown eyes asked her.

"Many times."

"Really?"

"Yes. Do you doubt me?"

"I don't doubt you," the man chuckled. "It's just that I've never seen you on the five o'clock express train to Boston before?"

"I don't usually ride first class," Anne colored slightly.

"Well you ought to," the man said as he took a seat right next to her. "You look like it, anyway."

"Thank you," Anne smiled.

There was something vaguely familiar about him. His entire bearing from the way his eyes seemed to look right into her to the fob chain dangling in her suit coat told her that he was someone important. She thought that she might have interviewed him for a magazine article, but she banished the idea.

"So what do you do?" He asked as he gazed intently into her eyes.

"I'm a writer."

"A writer?"

"Yes. A freelance journalist actually."

"What kind of articles do you write?

"All kinds," Anne shrugged. "Lately, I've been doing a lot of writing for business journals like _Fortune _and _Forbes_. You?"

"What do you think I do?" the stranger beckoned her.

"I don't really know," Anne shrugged.

"Oh come on," he egged her on. "Guess."

"Are you a lawyer?"

"Cold."

"A businessman?"

"Warmer."

"An executive."

"Yes," the man smiled. "My name is Henry Tudor. CEO of …"

"Synergy Enterprises," Anne mouthed. Her face colored red in embarrassment. "I'm sorry that I didn't recognize you before. That was really silly of me. Actually…"

"You thought that I would be ten years younger and twice as handsome?"

"Yes," Anne laughed.

"Everybody says that," Henry said as he shook her hand and brought it to his lips. "Almost everybody thinks that I'm twenty when, in fact, I'm going on thirty-five. How old are you, Miss Boleyn?"

"How old do you think I am?" she asked raising one of her eyebrow provocatively as she crossed her legs.

"No more than twenty-five."

"Twenty-six. Close enough."

"One can't always win at everything," Henry sighed ironically.

"I'm sure you know how to win a woman's heart."

"And what do you know about women's hearts, Miss Boleyn?"

"Well," she pursed her lips slightly and gazed on him head on. "I know that every woman wants to marry an intelligent, well read, multi-talented man such as yourself."

"And what kind of a woman do you think that an intelligent, well read, multi-talented man such as myself deserves, Miss Boleyn?"

"Someone exotic," she said twisting some stray strands of her black. "Someone that can treat you as an equal and not nag you in the same as your mother did when you were a naughty boy."

"You know me very well," Henry laughed. "You really believe these things, don't you?"

"I suppose," she said softly. "Then again, I never really know what I want."

"Surely, there must be one thing that you want more than others?"

"Yes, but I know that it is a daydream," Anne sighed.

"Go on," he urged her. "I won't tell anyone."

"It's silly. Actually, my mum says that it's ridiculous."

"Well?"

"I always wanted to marry a rich, ambitious man. A CEO like Rupert Murdoch or something."

"You could always marry me," Henry interjected.

"I wish I could, but…"

"But what?"

She gazed down at his hand and noticed the golden band around his ring finger. Henry placed his hand over it and shrugged it away. "That's nothing," he explained. "Don't worry about that. I'll get a divorce in no time and we can get married. It's easy. I go to the courthouse tomorrow and it'll be settled by next week."

"You'd let your wife go like that?" Anne asked.

"Why not?" Henry retorted. "She's older than me. She's taller than me. She wasn't even meant to be my wife."

"But you love her, don't you?"

"I don't," Henry shook his head.

"You do," Anne smiled slightly. "I can hear it in your voice. If you didn't love her, you wouldn't hide your ring the way you just did and pretend that you don't care. Even if you didn't, I couldn't marry you right away. We barely know each other."

A slightly pained look came over Henry's face. He glanced wistfully in the direction of the door and then turned towards Anne.

"Let's start over," Henry grinned sheepishly. "My name is Henry Tudor and you are?"

"Anne Boleyn."

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_A/N: Continue? _


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: Thank you so much for the reviews and alerts. Here is next chapter. Enjoy! _

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To Anne, the three hour train ride had compressed itself into the blink of an eye. By the time the train stopped at Boston's South Station, she had learned a great deal about Henry and she had given some things to chew on. She didn't reveal everything to him, however, because some things had to be kept back from him so that he would ask for her number or her e-mail address. He did and she gave them to him. He then asked her where she was staying and she mentioned the name of a small hotel in the theater district. "Don't stay in that dump," Henry said as they got off the train onto the platform. "Come to Whitehall. We've got plenty of room."

"I'll think about it," Anne gave him a shy smile.

They walked away from each other in opposite directions. She watched as he marched towards a uniformed limousine driver and a porter whom he greeted with firm handshakes The three men began moving and then Henry slapped both of them on their backs. It was a sign Anne knew well. It was the same thing that her father did back home when she and Mary accomplished something that he could be proud of.

She turned around and continued walking through the station carrying her bag in her right hand. She felt blood rushing towards her face, her carrying her forward, and her eyes looking at the signs for the one that would leave her to the street level above. Yet her mind was still fixed on him. Although he was probably a mile away from her in a penthouse suit with his wife, she couldn't rip herself away from him no matter how hard she tried. Her mind was obsessed with his oval face and those blue eyes that kept drilling into her body towards her very soul.

She marched up the escalator towards the street above. She managed to find the hotel, told the clerk her name, received a key, and then marched towards her room.

It was small and smelled of a cigarette smoke. The window looked out on a brick. The telephone was disconnected from the single wall jack and the television took five seconds to turn on.

She took off her clothes, opened her bag, and took out toiletries. She marched towards the bathroom, turned on the light, and locked the door behind her. She turned on the water and filled up the tub. When she lay down in it, it scalded her skin. Her slowly closed, her mind wandered towards Whitehall as the heat entered her every pore and caressed her Medusa-like locks.

She imagined herself standing in the middle of one of the numerous she had seen in travel magazines. The wallpaper was a combination of mauve and navy blue, a canopy bed in the center with Egyptian linen and a navy cover that matched the wallpaper, a dressed made out of mahogany which neatly framed her.

She forced herself to touch every object in this daydream. To feel the smoothness of the wood underneath her fingers, to see her reflection in the mirror, to brush her own hair there. Yet she could see the dream slowly dying as she opened her eyes. She was still lying in the same bath tub in that hotel.

She smiled as she drained the water and showered. She kept replaying her dream over and over. As she dressed, she kept rearranging the furniture as if she were playing a computer. Instead of a canopy bed, she would have a sleigh bed. Rather than a boring mahogany dressing table, she would have something even more extravagant and she would have him. That was the most important thing. She would have him and he would have her and they would be happy together.

As she powdered her face and curled her eyelashes, however, she realized that possessing Henry was a goal that seemed almost as impossible as climbing a Himalayan. Before she could every claim him as hers, she would have to overcome one obstacle after another. There was the wife, Katherine, to whom he was still attached because she reminded him of his long dead brother. There was the little girl, Mary, whom she would also have to win over. Let alone his parents, his friends, his advisors, and everyone else that mattered.

All at once, as she zipped up her navy blue dress and put black headband in her hair, she realized that securing the prize was much more difficult than either he or she had ever imagined. She was a lone Boleyn woman, the daughter of a London judge, who was competing for the heart of one of the richest men in the world. She hoped that she would be able to claim him, but she needed a plan.

She tossed the idea around as she stood in the elevator. She moved it around like a pinball from gate to gate and hole to hole. She schemed, she planned, she visualized. Yet neither forcing Henry to murder his wife or doing something else as dramatic would work. All of this required stealth and secrecy and then, little by little, she would batter all of his defenses and obstacles until there was none left.

She walked towards The Elephant and Castle as these thoughts finally drifted out of her mind. She opened a glass door and entered a room that seemed to have come out of someone's macabre nightmare. Everything inside was pure darkness except for the candles that flickered on the tables. She could see the silhouettes of the waiters and waitresses as well as the customers, she heard their voices. However, she could not completely make out the tone of their conversations.

She walked up toward the host, a tall Middle Eastern man with curly hair, and told him that she was meeting Thomas Howard.

He led her towards a VIP room in the back where a tall, dark-haired man was puffing on a Dominican cigar.

"Uncle Tom," Anne greeted as she sat down across from him.

"Ah, there you are!" Thomas smiled in recognition. He leaned over the table and planted a wet kiss on her cheek. "I almost thought that you wouldn't come."

"I'm sorry. I had to switch trains."

"Switch trains?"

"Yes. The one I was supposed to take from Pennsylvania Station here was delayed in Washington. I transferred to the express."

"And how was the express."

"It was excellent. They upgraded me to first class."

"Ah," the old man's eyes widened. "I suppose you got one of those cushy leather seats with a cup holder, eh?"

"Yes and I met someone."

"You met someone?" A tinge of sarcasm entered his voice. "Isn't that lovely?"

"Yes, it is," Anne whispered through her teeth. "As a matter of fact, it was Henry Tudor."

"Henry Tudor? How on earth did you manage that?"

"It was an accident. He just _happened_ to be in the same compartment as me."

"Oh, I'm sure that Henry Tudor didn't just _happen_ to be in your compartment, Anne. He's not stupid. He probably saw you getting on the train, followed you, and decided to take his seat in your compartment. He's not stupid, Anne."

"I know he isn't. We had quite the conversation on the ride here. As a matter of fact, he invited me to stay at Whitehall."

"The Whitehall Hotel?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you go?"

"Because," Anne hesitated. "I suppose because I didn't want to be too much of a bother."

"Too much of a bother," Thomas chuckled. "What kind of a bother would that be?"

"The man is married," Anne hissed. "I would get in the way of his marriage."

"So much the better. He hasn't had sex with Katherine in months. He doesn't love. You might as well go up there and…"

"And be turned into the laughingstock of the family? The little Boleyn girl that became Henry Tudor's whore."

"I didn't imply that," her uncle backed up. "I was actually thinking of something different."

"Like what?"

"Well," Thomas stroked his grey goatee. "You are a journalist and there are newspapers that are willing to pay you good money…"

"No thank you, Uncle. I don't write for the tabloids."

"Oh come on. You could tell the whole world about what goes behind the closed doors of Whitehall and the world would get a kick out of it. Imagine how famous you would be once the scandals got out."

"You mean infamous, Uncle?"

"I'm only saying that it would be good for your career and the family."

"Did you talk to Dad?" Anne asked as she blanched in surprise.

"He called this morning."

"And what did he tell you?"

"Well, he told me that you're perfectly miserable in your freelance job."

"I'm not poor."

"No, but you're not rich either. If you go and report on the happenings at Whitehall, you could make good money and, in the end, you would be happy."

There was something tremendously convincing in her Uncle's words. As he continued to explain the plan in the dim candlelit interior of the restaurant, she began to understand that it would be a fool proof way to meet Henry, talk to him, and, eventually, win him over.

That night, as she walked back towards the hotel, she felt elated. As she threw herself on her bed, she pulled out her telephone and typed out a text message to Henry: "Where are you? I want to talk to you."

As soon as she pressed Send, her blood rushed to her head. "What on earth am I doing?" she reproached herself. "What if he has forgotten about me? What if he is with somebody else?"

The thought tortured her for what seemed like hours. It flew around her mind like a moth. It disturbed her as she looked at the latest design in her issue of _Vogue_. Every time she saw a woman in a flowing white nightgown she would imagine Henry lying in bed with someone else. Perhaps, it was Katherine. Perhaps, it was some cheap hooker that his driver had installed in his limousine so that he could amuse himself as they made their way towards Whitehall.

She knew a great deal about these nagging doubts and this guilt which seemed to stain every part of her soul. She had been born and raised in the Catholic Church. Her father had sent her to St. Anne's, a boarding school outside of Paris, where the Dominican nuns wore long black and white habits and instilled into their charges a sense of order.

She remembered how she and her classmates would sit in the hard pews on Saturday afternoons, their hands on their aquamarine tartan skirts, while the nuns sat on thrones on either side of them. One by one, Reverend Mother would call each of her charges to stand in front of the chapel facing a marble altar surmounted by a life-size crucifix with a Christ who was so beaten and bloody that not one of the girls ever dared look at him when they knelt down for Communion.

As each girl knelt on the hard marble floor, Reverend Mother would turn towards the nuns and ask them, "Of what do you accuse this young woman?"

One by one, each of the nuns would make her accusation. Mother Catherine regularly pointed out the girl's patent disregard for biting her nails, bespectacled and arthritic Mother Agnes mentioned how she had quarreled with her in class over evolution. After each nun had had her say, Reverend Mother would give the girl a penance: scrubbing the hallways of the school with a toothbrush, ironing the priest's vestments for the week, working with Mother Sophia in the laundry room where the temperature was routinely in the nineties or the hundreds.

This chapter of faults was supposed to make the girls aware of their imperfections, but it turned more than one into a narcissistic, obsessive neat freak who observed every rule to the letter and then indulged herself on the weekends whenever the nuns had their backs turned by smoking marijuana in her bedroom or going out to Paris for an evening and returning at an obscene hour in the morning without notifying Mother Marie, the house mother, that she would be out of the house.

Anne remembered all of this, but more than anything she recalled how every time she committed the least demerit, the guilt would stick to her. Until she walked into a confessional and told the priest her sins, it would become an extension of her own physical makeup. A mark that she wouldn't be able to wash away no matter how hard she tried, something a though that constantly kept reoccurring until she finally shoved it away by telling someone else about it.

Lying on her bed still fully clothed, she kept looking at the white screen of her telephone and wondered if he would ever call. The phone buzzed softly and a white enveloped opened up on her screen reading: "I'm almost there. What is your room number?"

She rose from the bed and went to the small upright mirror on one of the walls. She tied her hair behind her head and applied some more luscious red lipstick. She went to her bag, retrieved a velvet jewelry box, and put on an antique sapphire ring that had belonged to one of her ancestors who had been a king's mistress five hundred years before. Anne's mother claimed that it was good luck charm; Anne didn't in the least believe her.

As she put it on, she heard someone knock on the door twice. She hurried and looked through the peephole. He was standing there completely alone with his suit coat thrown over his right hand.

She opened the door quietly and closed it silently behind him. Before she did so, she placed a "Do Not Disturb" sign.

"Well," Henry said surveying his surroundings and sitting down in the only chair. "You asked for me and now you have me."

"Thank you for coming to see me," Anne sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry if it was rather short notice."

"That's fine," Henry nodded. His tone betrayed his amusement with the situation. "I didn't have anything better to do."

"Would you like something to drink?" Anne asked as she opened the mini refrigerator located on the same wall as the bed.

"Do you have any whiskey?"

Anne looked through the small bottles on the shelves and shook her head no.

"Beer then?"

She pulled a small green bottle of Warsteiner out and handed it to him. He poured it into one of the glasses and gave her a slightly sarcastic glance. "I shouldn't have called this place a dump," he noted. "They have exquisite taste in beer."

"I'm afraid that's all they have taste in."

"Clearly," he scanned the yellow, peeling wallpaper and sniffed the air. "You don't deserve to live in a dump like this."

"I'm not going to be here long. Only three days or so and then…"

"And then?"

"I will go back to New York. I'm only here for an interview."

"Don't go back to New York so soon," Henry implored her. "Stay a little while longer. Amuse yourself. Amuse me."

"My apartment is in New York. My work is there."

"You said you were a freelance journalist. You could do your work anywhere, couldn't you?"

"I suppose so," Anne shrugged indifferently.

"Then why don't you do it from Boston."

"Because I can't."

"That's an awful excuse," Henry scoffed. "Only children use because to get away with things."

"Well," Anne pursed her lips. "There are certain other things that I have to consider."

"Such as?"

"For one thing, it would be much easier to travel to other places from New York than Boston."

"Please," he rolled his eyes. "We have one of the finest airports around."

"All right then," Anne smiled. "I think that the intellectual climate would be better for me down there."

"We have universities with vast libraries here, Miss Boleyn. I'm sure that they would be more than willing to accommodate your taste in literature."

"If things are as you say," Anne lied knowing full well that they were and staring him straight in the face. "I was wondering if I could have suite at Whitehall."

"Done," Henry answered. "You can have any that you want. You can even have mine."

"Also, would it be possible if I did some reporting on Synergy for some of the larger national newspapers while I was there?"

"I don't see why not," Henry nodded. "Although all of that doesn't go through me."

"Really? Who do the journalists talk to?"

"Wolsey."

"Wolsey?"

"Yes, Wolsey. He's actually chairman of the board at Synergy. Runs the thing all by himself. I just sign off on things, travel around the world, and do the usual things. Sometimes, I hire and fire people. Wolsey does much of the company work. You can talk to him and I'm sure that he won't be able to resist you."

"I'm sorry," Anne smiled, "but are you able to resist me."

"I don't know," he moved towards the bed. "Are you?"

He leant in to her and kissed her on the cheek. At first, she recoiled slightly. Fear paralyzed her every limb. She didn't move. Instead, she allowed a moan slowly to escape from her lips and disappear into the air.

He moved in closer to her kissed her on the neck. He moved down to her collar bone. He placed his hand on her thigh and moved his head down towards her stomach.

With each kiss, Anne felt herself being pulled closer and closer to him. She allowed him to move her body like putty. She didn't offer resistance. She didn't scream. She didn't yell because it was what she wanted. From time to time, she would smile at him and he would smile back at her. She would softly moan his name and he would repeat hers in her ear like an incantation. As their voices became intertwined with each other in a ceaseless duet of soft constants and syllables, their limbs joined together until they formed the four roots of a tree.

Eventually, they fell asleep on top of each other. She heard his heart beating like a hammer against her ear, while he felt hers softly pulsating against his chest.


	3. Chapter 3

From the windows of his office on the twenty-fifth floor of the Whitehall Palace Hotel, the grey-headed figure of Thomas C. Wolsey looked out across the city of Boston towards the grey shores of Atlantic and beyond as a prideful smile spread over his craggy features.

Under his stewardship, Synergy Industries had expanded from a small banking house into one of the largest conglomerates in the world. Its publishing arm owned three of the greatest publishing houses in the world (Knopf, Random House, and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) as well as some of the leading magazines and newspaper (_Sports America_, _American History_, _The British Historical Review, The Scotsman). _Then there were the cell phone manufacturers, the internet service providers, the record labels, the soft drink companies, and the hundreds of miles of real estate that he and Henry's father, Henry Tudor Sr., had bought from under the noses of impecunious Brahmins and Oxford dons who had spent their last cent at gambling tables at the glittering casinos of Monte Carlo and Dubai.

If one had asked Thomas Wolsey how one man could accomplish so much within the span of fifty years, he would always smile whimsically and say: "Well, I really don't know either."

There was some disingenuous in this curt reply which came from rather thick lips that always seemed to curl up into a grin. He knew and the world also knew. There were hundreds of men all over the world who had horror stories to tell about how Thomas C. Wolsey had cheated them out of their businesses so that he could add them to his conglomerate.

Every time a Synergy merger floundered or the president of a once prospering pharmaceutical giant found himself increasingly surrounded by "yes men" from Boston and consistent threats of termination from above, there was one name that was on the press's lips and it was always the same: Wolsey.

Reporters would wait in front of Whitehall and then ambush the septuagenarian on one of his morning constitutionals. The journalists would press their cameras and microphones asking him whether he was directly responsible for the floundering of a merger with Valois Enterprises or the tabloid stories that had ruined the credibility of the conservative party in Britain by revealing that one of its MPs' sons was carrying on an affair with an under aged girl. To all of these, Wolsey would shrug his shoulders and reply, "You might think that, but I couldn't possibly tell you."

There were people at Synergy who did know. One was Oliver Cromwell. He was the slightly overweight, middle-aged man whose gaze was following Wolsey's. His small, beady eyes which scurried from person to person and his slightly prognathous jaw were not those of a born businessman, but of someone who had worked his way up the chain of command from humble post office clerk to the unenviable post of Wolsey's private secretary.

On Wolsey's orders, this man would pay off judges and lawyers so that they would close their eyes to the shadier business dealings. He would fight off the nosiest of reporters with restraining orders and lawsuits.

Finally, he satisfied Wolsey's sexual appetites by wandering the streets of Boston looking for prostitutes that would be willing to sleep with his boss. "A very rich man," was the way that he always introduced Wolsey. Then, after the woman had dressed herself sufficiently, he would drive her to the street corn where she had been picked up the night before threatening her never to reveal the identity of the man she had slept with the previous night.

He could see Wolsey's eyes darting about from building to building in a one man game of leap frog. That was never a good sign for it meant that the dam was already leaking. When it burst, and it was a question of _when_ and not _if_, Cromwell would have a front seat to one of his boss's infamous fits of anger which lasted for hours.

Wolsey turned towards Cromwell. There was lightning his gray eyes and acrid smoke would probably escape from his nostrils if he was anything like the medieval dragons that Cromwell had read about as a boy at grammar school. Clearly, there was something that was disturbing his equilibrium and it definitely was not the dover sole he had had for lunch that morning.

Cromwell twiddled his thumbs backwards and forwards for a few moments. He arranged some papers on the table in front of him. He skimmed one or two resumes that he had just received from two interns. There was absolutely nothing that he could possibly do when Wolsey was having a fit except sit back and listen.

"What are we going to do about that report, Cromwell?" Wolsey finally thundered as he took his seat at the head of the table.

"What reporter?" Cromwell immediately dropped the resume and allowed it to the slide to the blood red carpet below.

"The one that Henry has been taken with," Wolsey replied coolly.

"She's a phase," Cromwell replied trying to ease Wolsey's conscience. "I give her three more weeks before she leaves."

"She's already been here three weeks," Wolsey emphasized. "And she's a drain on my finances."

"Surely, that's not possible, sir. You make more money with Synergy…"

"Henry rearranged the entire Presidential Suite of the hotel for her. New bed, new curtains, new furnishings. Thousands of dollars spent on a woman when he has a perfectly decent one waiting for him on the floor above."

"Well…"

"Don't well me, Cromwell," Wolsey snapped. "You and I both know that Katherine is not perfect, but she is his wife and we have to respect."

"Except that he's bored with her."

"Then why didn't tell me to get him some of my whores?" Wolsey demanded.

"He told me that he doesn't make love women who smell like six packs of cigarettes and whiskey."

"Well, I don't like women who are brought into _my _hotel, allowed to stay here interminably, and knock on my office door every single morning demanding an interview with me."

"What do you suggest that we do?"

"Get rid of her," Wolsey emphasized every last syllable. "I will not have some woman reporter running stories in the newspapers about the dealings of the company while I'm chairman of the board."

"Be reasonable, sir."

"Why should I be reasonable?"

"He likes her a lot. I don't think it's a good idea for you to put a stick about at this very instant."

"All right, Cromwell. Let's play this game your way. What are her academic credentials?"

"A summa cum laude graduate of Oxford with a Master's from Harvard."

"In journalism," Wolsey snorted. "I've seen _plenty_ of those."

"And don't forget post-graduate studies at the Sorbonne," Cromwell emphasized. "She's also the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, President of Boleyn & Son, and niece of Thomas Howard, the real estate magnate."

"Boleyn and Howard are small fish, Cromwell, and neither of them has influence. Last I heard Boleyn was up to his ears in debt and Howard was being investigated for embezzlement."

"Have you even talked to Anne Boleyn, Wolsey?" Cromwell asked. "She came to my office the other day to chat. She's extremely well read and intelligent, a highly skill wordsmith as well."

He pulled out an article from a hidden drawer in his desk that Anne had given him for such an occasion when she had visited his office two days before. He handed it to Wolsey who looked it over suspiciously and began skimming the page.

"_The Financial Ledger_," he nodded in approval.

He let out a brief chuckle and then gave Cromwell a Cheshire cat smile. "Listen to this," he said. "'_Although Francis Valois has proclaimed himself the king of all media, he has not yet attained the title of emperor or pontifex maximus. A source close to the CEO of VF Media Corp. indicates that the only things that are of interest to Mr. Valois are wine, women, and song. If that is the case, perhaps, he should enter the wine business and call it a day.'" _

Wolsey turned towards Cromwell and gave him a smile that stretched from ear to ear. It was one that belonged to a cat who had swallowed cuckoo, a criminal who had just found his loophole to get out of jail without a trial. Cromwell knew that look extremely well. Wolsey had a plan.

"Call Anne," Wolsey instructed Cromwell.

"Yes, sir," Cromwell bowed.

**XOXOXO**

Anne was lying in bed with the sheets drawn up to her and staring at the chandelier in the ceiling. Three weeks ago, she could not have imagined that she would be spending her days at the Whitehall Palace Hotel. She had not anticipated that every morning one of the maids would come and help her dress or bring her a golden tray on which was a tea pot and crackers. For a woman that had come to Boston with an crocodile skin bag that held enough clothes for three days, she now had a closet that was bursting with designer dresses and shoes that had Henry had lavished on her.

When she had first moved him, she didn't know what to feel when she woke up and found a package on her doorstep with a red bow from Louboutin in New York. When she understood that Henry was behind it, she would send it back to him with an apologetic note. "I'm sorry," she would write in her beautiful cursive hand, "but I simply cannot accept a gift from someone that loves someone else."

The gifts continued coming. Every morning, she would find a dress or a pair of shoes deposited by one of the servants on her doorstep. When she would offer to pay for her dinner at the hotel restaurant, the maître d' would explain to her that it was already paid for by someone in the management. When she would make phone calls to London in the middle of the night and worry about the bill, the manager downstairs would say that all of the fees had been waived on her behalf.

She found herself enchanted by the world she was living in. In England, she had belonged to a well off, upper crust family that had some money to burn. However, Thomas Boleyn was not a person who allowed Anne and her sister Mary to spend his money because they wanted a designer handbag or a pair of shoes. Although they heartily disliked them, he insisted that they wear out their shoes and dresses before he would buy them new ones.

Even when Anne was at university studying journalist and had begun to hobnob with editors of some worthy newspapers, someone would always comment on her rather shabby appearance. "The poor girl," someone remarked at a tea party at _The Financial Times_, "couldn't her father have spent a few more pounds to get her a decent looking dress."

At Whitehall, things were diametrically different. When she wandered through the marble halls allowing her six inch heels to click against the floors, an awed silence would always follow her wherever she went. Several times, an elderly clerk had asked if she would stand at the reception so that he could just gaze upon her. This was the kind of woman that she had become: desired, admired, and someone whom people stood in awe of even they didn't know her.

Henry, of course, was the person who spoiled her the most. He would take to fancy restaurants downtown or to Macy's so that she could sample their perfumes. He catered entirely to her every whim. When Anne insisted that they visit the Boston Atheneum so that she could look at a 16th century map of Nuremberg, he took her there and obtained for her a library card free of charge. When she complained to him that she was running out of things to read, he went to Commonwealth Books downtown and bought every volume of Dickens and Trollope to keep her busy.

She knew that he was fascinated and beguiled by her. When they were seated at different tables, she could feel his eyes on her neck urging her to turn around so that he could get a glimpse of her enchanting brown eyes and her slightly crooked smile. If he liked her enough, he would excuse himself and visit her table so that she could laugh at his jokes.

He came and visited her in the night when she would wait for him. He ran his hands through her silky brown hair, kissed her lips, kissed her neck, and would lie with her for hours on end when they would do nothing except talk. He asked her questions about London and whether she had ever seen the queen. She asked him if he could finance an excursion to the Grand Canyon.

"The Grand Canyon?" Henry scoffed. "Why would you want to see the biggest hole in the world?"

"Precisely because it's the biggest hole in the world," she would reply.

She knew, however, that things could not always remain in this particularly halcyon state. There were nights when Henry didn't come to visit her or when he would send a maid who would excuse him and say that he had been unavoidably detained. There was an entire week when she didn't received any presents from him at all and when he didn't acknowledge her when she sat down to eat in the restaurant. She understood it well enough. She always had. There was another woman in his life that he had to attend to and Anne couldn't be the center of his attention one hundred percent of the time.

Lying in her bed and staring at the ceiling, Anne felt like one of the princess in the fairy tales that her mother had read to her when she was a little girl. She had found her prince. She was supposed to have her happily ever after and yet that happily ever after was not her to enjoy at the present moment.

There was a soft knock on her bedroom door.

"Come in," Anne said as straightened herself.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Lupe the maid said as she poked her head through the door. "There's a Mr. Cromwell that wants to see you."

"What does he want?" Anne asked.

"He didn't say."

Immediately, Anne got out of the bed and began dressing herself. She brushed her hair and threw on a navy blue dress that accentuated her figure. She put on her makeup in a quick, slapdash manner. She didn't have the time for deliberation. If Cromwell was standing in the sitting room, it meant something important was going to happen.

She found him as anticipate sitting in one of the Louis XIV chairs with his resting on a coffee table. He was whistling an off key rendition of "God Save the Queen." Anne gave him a coy smile which he returned with nervous nod.

"Well," Anne said as she seated herself on the couch opposite him. "It's good to see you, Mr. Cromwell."

"Likewise. Mr. Wolsey wants to see you."

"Wolsey?" Anne swallowed hard. In the last three weeks, she had called on him frequently and he had constantly excused himself saying that he didn't have time or that a meeting in Hong Kong was much more pressing than meeting with a glorified graduate student in journalism from Harvard.

"Yes," Cromwell nodded. "Actually, he wants to see you right now."

There was not a moment to lose. Before the words had escaped from Cromwell's mouth, Anne was already heading towards the door. She opened and closed it so quickly that it slammed on Cromwell's face.

"I'm sorry about that," she said as she walked towards the elevator and saw how the slightly portly gentleman was holding his nose. "I'm not usually a door slammer."

"And I don't usually walk into doors," Cromwell commented drily.

She tapped her foot nervous against the carpeted floor as they made their way to the twenty-third floor. The five or six minutes seemed like five or six centuries. She felt a stabbing pain in her stomach as Cromwell continued his off key whistling. He had switched to "Rule Britannia." Anne began to wonder to herself whether he was always this subtle when it came to bringing guests into Wolsey's office.

As they got off, he led her down a darkened hallway towards the glass doors of a large spacious office. The words Synergy were engraved on the glass in frosty letters and secretary swathed completely in black was sitting behind a computer. A Vivaldi concert for four violins was playing in the background.

Cromwell led her towards a seat next to the secretary's desk and told her that Wolsey would be shortly with her.

For a time, Anne rifled through various glossy fashion magazines looking at various designer dresses. However, she could help hearing a conversation that was going on in a room directly across from her. She pressed the ear to the door.

"Now then, Mr. Stote," an aristocratic voice began in rather leisurely and forthright manner. "You seem to have gotten yourself into a bit of a mess and you haven't done a lot for the image of the company either, have you?"

"No, Mr. Wolsey," a timid tenor replied. "I'd like to say how terribly sorry I am…"

"You should have that before," Wolsey interrupted him. "Can we do anything for him, Cromwell?"

There was moment of hushed silence, whispering, shuffling of feet. Then Mr. Stote burst out, "Really? I can't begin to express how happy I am…"

"All right, Stote, you've been lucky," Wolsey cut him off. "Heard something else funny about you the other day. Someone said that you would be abstaining from voting on the Valois merger."

"Well…"

"Don't."

"No. No, of course not."

"All right, Stote, you've been lucky and try not to be such a damn fool. And if you must use whores, Cromwell will give you a list of whore houses where they understand the meaning of discretion."

Stote stammered his thanks. Anne heard his feet heading towards the door and made her way back to her chair where she resumed glancing at her magazine. She didn't bother looking at the pear shaped, middle aged, balding man who had just been given a dressing down. The sound of his voice was more than enough for her.

She did notice, however, Cromwell approaching her. He gently took the magazine away from her hands and bade her to stand up. He tried to take her hand in his, but she pulled it away and made her way towards the now open office door where she saw Wolsey seated behind his desk reviewing a stack of paper work. She walked right inside, but he was so completely absorbed that he didn't look up until Cromwell announced in the most solemn voice he could muster, "Miss Anne Boleyn is here to see you, sir."

Wolsey looked up from his notes and bade Anne to sit down in the armchair across from his desk. He dismissed Cromwell with a flick of his wrist and bade him to leave the door unlocked. It was only then that he fixed his gray eyes on Anne and, instantly, she felt that she was seated in front of the real power behind the throne.

"Miss Boleyn," Wolsey began. "It is such a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I'm sorry, but I have been terribly busy these last few weeks."

"That is perfectly understandable," Anne replied through her slightly greeted teeth. "You have an extremely hectic schedule, after all."

"Of course, but I am here and I have a proposal for you."

"I'm sorry, sir, but when I spoke to you last…"

"Miss Boleyn," Wolsey looked her squarely in the eyes. "You must understand that what I am about to say is something that is completely outside of my comfort zone as I don't do favors for anyone, but…"

"But?"

"But I feel that due to your tenacity and your educational pedigree, I made a few phone calls and asked Mr. Preston at _The Standard_ to take you on as a business correspondent."

"Thank you, sir," Anne replied mechanically. "It is a tremendous privilege for me to work for a newspaper as renowned as _The Standard_."

"However," Wolsey continued completely oblivious to everything Anne had just said, "Your position is a little bit different than a report who goes and asks uncomfortable questions. As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you were capable of keeping a secret.""

"Of course."

"Well, then, how would you like to do an investigative piece of VF Media Corporation?"

"I'm not sure exactly…"

"Well," Wolsey explained. "I'm sure that you've heard that there are some companies that our company and their company are planning to trade some of our smaller investments. Of course, Henry and I cannot invest in them unless we know exactly what it is that they are planning to sell us. They have played tricks on us in the past and we are not willing to be embarrassed again. Therefore, I would like for you to go there and do some digging around in your capacity as a reporter. Can you do that for me?"

"Yes," Anne smiled, "but I don't think that it would be to my benefit to go and look for another company's dirty shirts."

"Miss Boleyn," Wolsey's voice became steely. "You do not have a choice in this matter. If you won't work for me, I will not have a second thought about throwing you out of this hotel."

"This hotel is Henry's," Anne protested. "The entire company is his and you are just the chairman of the board of directors."

"Henry does own this hotel and Synergy, but who do you think runs the company?"

Silence.

"Of course," Wolsey chuckled. "You now understand exactly what kind of people you are dealing with. So what will it be, Miss Boleyn?"

"I'm going to _The Standard _tomorrow morning."

"Good," Wolsey smiled as he rose and shook her hand. "Cromwell will see you out."

As Anne walked out of the office and took the elevator down, she felt the entire world spinning around her in concentric circles. She had felt like this before. When she was nearly expelled from St. Anne's for smoking on school property and her father had to bail her out with a plea to Reverend, she had that same sickening feeling.

She ran to her bedroom and locked the door behind her. She laid down on her bedroom and stared at a skyscraper outside her window. She wondered aloud if she had just sold her soul to the devil himself and then she wondered if she couldn't turn herself into a demon and give Wolsey a taste of his own medicine.

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**A/N: **_Thank you for the reviews, alerts, and favorites. The story will pick up speed now. Please let me know what you think! _


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Thank you to everyone who alerted and favorited this story. I'm glad that you are enjoying it. Here's the next chapter. Please let me know what you think!**

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From the moment Anne walked into the offices of Garvell Preston, the editor-in-chief of _The Standard, _she knew exactly what kind of man she would be working with. He was of middling height, slightly bald, a prominent aquiline nose, and two beady blue-grey eyes. Slightly overweight and pear-shaped, he carried himself with the self-contented complacence of an English squire who loved his dogs, his guns, and his women although not necessarily in that order.

There was also something rakish about him that was clearly out of place with the spic and span cleanliness of his fifth floor office. There were numerous photographs scattered all over of various beautiful actresses that had been autographed for him. As she surveyed the walls, nowhere could she see any photographs of a wife or a child.

It only confirmed for her what she already knew. Namely, that men like Preston were so rarely understood that they spent themselves in hopes deceived. They spent most of their lives searching for some ideal woman that would allow them to practice their contentedly without worrying too much about those other quotidian details like where they would buy their next lunch or how many shirts had been left unwashed by the maid. However, that had not been Preston's lot in life nor anyone else's. They were condemned to worry about these things just like any anonymous person that passed underneath their office windows. Not only this, but they contented themselves with allowing their fantastic mistresses to be only persons that lived in their dreams rather than their real lives. They were lovely, lifeless phantoms that floated through their lives and then disappeared leaving only their signatures behind.

As she sat in his chair with her crocodile bag in her lap, she noticed that the man standing before was frightfully nervous. He kept twisting his thumbs in different directions. Sometimes, he would look at his watch and let out a low whistle. It was almost as if he didn't want to be sitting in his office speaking to this beautiful young woman that he had hired sight unseen because his boss up at the big house in Boston had asked him, nay blackmailed him into taking her on as one of his business reporters.

"Tell me, Miss Boleyn," he finally said as he sat up in his chair and looked straight into her bewitching brown eyes. "Why should I take you on at _The Standard_ and allow you to investigate VF Media Corp?"

"It is because Mr. Wolsey wishes it, sir."

"Don't play the obedient schoolgirl with me," Preston snapped. "I asked you an honest question. I expect an honest answer."

"To be perfectly honest, _sir_, I think that the public should know about the various scandals that have afflicted VF since Francis Valois took over the company upon his father's death."

"And what would those scandals be, Miss Boleyn?" Preston's voice showed how undisturbed he was by her sarcasm. "People's fingers ending up in the gravy at the Thanksgiving Day dinner? Francis Valoi's serial mishandling of the company finances?"

"What about the fact that his investors have sold off more shares within the last three weeks than in the last three years due to the pending merger with Synergy?"

"That is rather strange," Preston conceded, "but I still don't understand how that would make a newsworthy story. Let one that would make it onto the front page of one of the most prestigious newspapers in America."

"Mr. Preston," Anne smiled slightly. "You are clearly an intelligent man. Don't you think it the least bit suspicious that they are selling off shares now to shareholders in other companies and conglomerates rather than to Synergy?"

"I think that it is suspicious, but I don't find it the least bit disturbing. It is business as usual, Miss Boleyn."

"Except it's not, Mr. Preston. Francis Valois has always been known for being deceitful. He backed out of a merger with Synergy two years ago and then started toying with Suleyman Osmanli at the Ankara Bank."

"That Ankara Bank story was investigated by George Williamson at _The Post _ and was proven to be an absolute fraud. Osmanli himself said so in a press conference."

"But there was nothing that came out of the Valois camp," Anne pointed out sharply. "They never denied anything. They mere issued a statement to shut everyone up."

"That's what most business do when they deal with bad news."

"Except that there was a transfer of ten billion Turkish lira to Valois on the same day that the deal with Synergy was cancelled. A transaction which can be proved, Mr. Preston."

Preston began rearranging the papers on his desk for what seemed to be the fifteenth time during the course of that interviewed. He moved them listlessly from one end to the other. Sometimes, he piled them together and tapped their ends so that they became a nice little pile. Only then did he try to suppress the yawn that had been encroaching on him all afternoon.

"Do you think, Mr. Preston, that investigating the transactions between Ankara Bank and VF Media Corp is something that you would be willing to take on?"

"I'll do it, Miss Boleyn," Preston sighed. "If only because I have no choice."

Anne smiled at the middle aged gentlemen behind the desk and made her desk as quickly as she could. She made her ways towards the elevator and took it down to the main floor. She pulled out her cell phone and quickly dialed Wolsey's number. The phone rang interminably before Cromwell picked up on the other end. "Thomas," Anne whispered rather secretively. "He took me on. Can you text me the directions to the New York branch of Ankara Bank?"

Within half an hour, a bus had brought her to an imposing imitation neoclassical building on the Upper East Side. In the Corinthian capitals of the columns and the gleaming marble of the steps, she saw an echo of St. Anne's in Paris and the magnificent Harvard library in Cambridge.

The classical interior, however, hid an interior that could have easily come from _The Arabian Nights. _On the walls of the main reception area, the management had hung up a series of Kars carpets. Each one was much more delicately woven than the last in vibrant, sun-drenched colors. On one of them the central attraction was a spider building an intricate web from its entrails that spread throughout the whole composition. Anne took a long breath as she admired the intricacies of the art work while numerous managers and tellers did a brisk trade around her in their glassed in cubicles.

She stood there for what seemed like hours transfixed by the beauty of it all: the carpets on the walls, the rose water perfume that floated through the air, the Turkish delight that was served in golden bowls. It was a decadent opulence that the Occident had only imagined in fairy tales, but which was part and parcel of the life of the Osmanlis and their friends at Ankara Bank.

"Can I help you with something?" an olive-skinned young man with a British asked Anne.

"Yes," Anne replied slightly startled. "I was wondering if I could meet with Mr. Osman Kuyuglu. My name is Anne Boleyn. I'm a reporter for _The Standard._"

"I'm sorry, but Mr. Kuyuglu is not here. He's out to lunch, but I can call you when he gets back and let you know where he is.," the young man replied.

"Thank you," Anne slipped a manila business card between the man's fingers. "Call my mobile number."

"I will."

Anne walked out of the bank and into the crisp autumn air. She took a bus towards the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then began wandering in a zigzag around Central Park until she ended up at the duck pond. It was a routine that she had practiced since childhood when she and Mary would chase each other around Kensington Garden while their exhausted, constantly out of breath brother, George, would try and catch up with them.

Wandering past the copses of oak and maples, she imagined that she was a little girl in a golden yellow dress running down a lawn with her blonde haired sister. Whenever they ended up at the imaginary goal line, they always gave each other a good ribbing about who came first. Anne was the faster runner, but she always pretended that Mary was the one who had been given their mother's long, stately, and muscled legs. "And what about me?" George would always ask as he came towards them and collapsed on the green lawn. "What on earth am I? The fucking maharajah of Mysore or something?"

All of three always collapsed as soon as he said. The two girls tickled the dark-haired boy while he would good-naturedly kick, scratch, and try ever possible technique he had to weasel his way out of their grasps. There were helpless giggles, there were bloody noses. There was that infamous day when Anne walked away from it with an arm that was broken in three places. It was a placed in a wrap-around cast and turned her into the laughing-stock of St. Anne's for a good quarter. She didn't mind it at all.

"What doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger," she remarked to herself as she wandered past skate boards, pedestrians playing hip hop on their ancient silver stereos, and old women sitting on benches and discussing the latest family news: Hymie had his other hip replaced, Marty's granddaughter got a boob job for her birthday and a silver Lexus.

Walking past fountain after fountain and field after field, she allowed her gaze on the azure sky above. Suddenly, she felt completely lost. This was not her beautiful city, this was not her beautiful park. She was a dark-haired stranger in a cream trench coat wandering aimlessly from one point to another, an ant barely visible from an airplane, an anonymous dot to a satellite from outer space or someone that was look down at her from another planet or from heaven itself.

There were billions of dots all over the world going about their daily lives. Each one of them was making the linear journey from a beginning to an ending. Yet where the life of a firefly only lasts twenty four hours before it dies, these human flies could live for as long as seven or eight decades and feel that every day was absolutely, unbearably the same without any sense of forward motion. Only a monotonous inertia that seeped into one's blood and made a person so sluggish that she would stay in her pyjamas all morning fixated on the Style network or E! rather than doing something that could be more constructive and elevating such as writing a story or reading a book.

Anne knew as she sat on a bench in an isolated corner next to the remains of a recently deceased rose bush that New York was a place that could easily turn a perfectly normal person into an existentialist and vice versa. When she had first come here after her graduation with her Master's from Harvard, it had been the pinnacle of a dream that had started when she began writing for her school newspaper in elementary school. It had always been her dream to work at the center of the world among the trend setters, the writers, the poets, the opera singers, the critics, the journalists, the bankers, the hedge fund managers, and almost everybody else that made this city teem with life.

In her dream, she had not been practical nor had she calculated how expensive a life at the center of the world could be. For the first year and a half, she lived in a tiny shoe box apartment on the Upper West Side that could barely fit anything except a bed, a couch, desk, and some assorted bookshelves that she bought from Ikea. Her diet was reduced to whatever she could find at a surplus food store on West 36th Street that wasn't completely spoiled to the core. She lived for days on end on old bagels stuffed with vegetables.

There were whispers around the dining room table that Christmas. As she was on her way to the airport, her father pressed two thick wads of hundred dollar bills into her. "For a rainy day," Thomas whispered gently in her ear.

"Dad, I can't accept this," Anne stammered.

"Your mother and I insist," Thomas reiterated a little bit more firmly. "It's for your own good."

Things changed after that windfall. She began receiving calls from better newspapers and magazines. She moved into a one bedroom apartment on West 111th Street and Broadway. She bought a pet cat. She went on weekly Excursions to The Strand and rammed her pale hands through the dollar bins at Academy Records looking for 78 rpm records by obscure pianists with names like Mischa Levitzki, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Elly Ney, and Jose Iturbi so that she could stack them against the gramophone in her living room and pretend that knew more about the pianists than she actually did.

She remembered how easy it was to stand in front of a bin and run her fingers through the rough record jackets. Some of them had been torn by someone's rabid dog, another had a psychedelic picture of a composer's brain within the performer's brain while the violet and purple lettering advertise a concerto for piano solo by a man named Alkan or the complete Transcendental Etudes of Liapunov.

There were all kinds of people that she encountered on her weekly trip to academy. There was the usual group of navel-gazing record collectors. Most of them were men in their late fifties or early sixties who brought binders and lunch boxes full of index cards so that they could cross reference the store's collection with their own. They were so caught up in their collecting that they didn't bother with the usual courtesies and niceties that Anne had been brought up with. When one of them decided to haul out an entire stack of 45s before Anne had a chance to look through them herself, she gave him a long withering glare. His reply was simply, "I got here first. Finders keepers, lady."

There were others, of course, including a man in his early thirties who always waltzed into the record shop wearing giant silver headphones. Once he stood next to Anne and she could hear a soprano trilling like a nightingale. When she asked him who it was, he gave her a witheringly scornful look and replied, "Galli-Curci."

Apart from Academy, she had begun to gather around her a small coterie of friends whom she would meet for cocktails every Friday at a swank bar in Chelsea called Taylor's. Most of them were artists, poets, and students of various majors and orientations. One was Thomas Wyatt was working on a translation of obscure Greek poet who had espoused Communism during the civil war there as part of his MFA at Columbia while a British expat named Mark Smeaton was making a name for himself as a castrato because of a thyroid disorder that had prevented his voice from deepening during adolescence.

She smiled as the sun lit on the beautiful circle that was her face. Her eyes were fixed on the golden branches of the trees ahead of her and a small figure in a black coat that was coming her way. She took out a white handkerchief and waved it in his direction. He ran towards her and embraced. She asked him to sit down.

"You weren't at the duck pond," Henry feigned irritation.

"I didn't make it," Anne apologized by pulling out her lower lip. "I'm sorry. I got too caught up in thinking about things."

"Oh really?" Henry asked. "What kinds of things were you thinking about?"

"Life, I guess," Anne sighed as she gave him a good natured shove. "The big questions."

"Why am I here? What on earth am I supposed to do while I am here? Why the fuck am I supposed to care about what's going on?" Henry recited mechanically. "Believe me, I've thought about them a great deal."

"Did you come up with anything interesting?" Anne asked.

"Not really. Seeing as I don't really believe in anything except that I have to run the company as well as I can so that I can leave a legacy for my children."

"Except you don't run the company," Anne emphasized. "You told me as much yourself."

"That's true," Henry nodded, "but there will come a time when I will be running it without Wolsey and things would be different than they are now."

"I know this might sound like an impertinent question, but why haven't you done anything until this point?"

"I don't know," Henry shrugged carelessly. "In the beginning, I think it was because I was too young to run a company on my own. Then I decided that boozing and carousing with women was much more important than being a businessman."

"So, basically, you allow Wolsey to run your company for you because you were too irresponsible to run it yourself?"

"Yes," Henry blushed. "You could say that."

"And you've allowed Wolsey to become de facto head of the company while you go out with me," Anne noted ironically.

"What do you have against Wolsey?" Henry snapped. "He's doing a stand up job."

"I don't have anything against him, Henry. I just think…"

"You think too much," Henry interrupted her. "Has anyone told you that?"

"Yes, but…"

"Then maybe you should do less thinking and more doing. More _arbeiten _and less _sprechen_."

He rose from the bench and headed towards the hill. Although she was upset, she followed him until she was able to stop him by grabbing his hand and leading him to another bench.

"I understand," Anne replied quietly. "I completely understand what you are talking about, Henry, and I'm sorry."

"If you had said that two seconds ago, we would not be having this conversation," Henry noted coldly as took out a cigarette and lit up. "Wolsey is a good man, Anne. He did excellent work for my father. He's doing wonderful work for me. He's negotiating that deal with VF Media Corp and things are working out as smoothly as possible."

As he smoked one cigarette after another, Anne desperately wanted to tell him about Francis Valois and Suleyman Osmanli. The recent bank transaction that sent hundreds of thousands of lira from Ankara to New York was something that could potentially affect Synergy but she bit back her tongue. Until she had every single fact of the case, he probably wouldn't listen to her and, even if he did, she would only see more anger from his end and that was something that she wanted to avoid at all costs.

They sat on that bench for a good half hour in silence until Anne's phone rang and the young man she had seen at the bank told her that Osman Kuyuglu would meet her in half an hour. She explained it to Henry, but he merely gave her a vacant stare. He didn't kiss her goodbye. He didn't embrace her. He only said, "See you back in Boston" and that was the only farewell she received.

Anne marched through Central Park towards the Plaza Hotel without thinking about the tears that were streaming down her face or the fact that her hands were bitterly cold. Over and over again, she wondered whether her prince was really a beast in disguise. Whether a man who lavished every gift on her that she could imagine, wined and dined her at the finest restaurants, and sent her bouquets of flowers every morning with her breakfast was the same person who had told her that she should focus more on doing rather than on thinking. Essentially, reminding her to mind her own business and not place her nose in places where it didn't belong.

She tried to reconcile it every which way in her mind. She tried to excuse it by saying that he had had a bad day or that Katherine was nagging him again because he was withholding. Perhaps, Wolsey had called him into his office that morning and giving him a dressing down about his debauched lifestyle or yet another bastard baby being born to some two bit prostitute.

In making these excuses, she was trying to mask the shadow that had flitted across his face, the bulging vein in his neck, and the irate eyes that stared into the core of her being. She had never seen this side of him before although she had heard countless stories. In a telephone exchange with Thomas Howard, her uncle had cautioned her to look out for what he called Henry's "black moods." Yet she had shrugged him off saying and teasing, "How black are they?"

Yet there had been something righteous in Henry's eyes. His anger was warranted and he had been right about Anne no matter how many times she wanted to shift the blame for the outburst to him. She was overthinking everything and looking for smoke where there wasn't any fire to begin with. Just because she had had an unpleasant encounter with Wolsey and that he had blackmailed her into accepting the position did not meant that he was an awful human being or a monster. Even if he did Mr. Stote a dressing down that seemed a little too sharp-tongued for her tastes, she would have done the same thing if she had met a maid that didn't do her exact bidding at the moment she was told to do something.

Anne let out a deep sigh as she climbed the front steps of the Plaza and made her way towards the lobby. As she sat down in one of the plush leather armchairs, she felt humbled and chastened. She didn't know or understand anything about Wolsey, Henry, and Synergy, but she could always find out.

It was as an investigator rather than a mere journalist that she rose to greet Osman Kuyuglu, the president of Ankara Bank's New York branch. She noticed that he walked in long and elegant as if he didn't have a care in the world. His face lit up as soon as he saw her, he kissed her on the hand, and led her towards a darkened bar where they sat facing each other while she downed a glass of cognac and he slurped his way through a coke.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Miss Boleyn?" he asked her as he pulled out a cigar and offered it to her.

"No, thank you," she waved it away. "I wanted to ask you if you were aware of a transaction between your bank and VF Media Corp a few weeks ago."

"We do a great deal of business with VF Media Corp, Miss Boleyn," Kuyuglu nodded understandably as he began to twirl one of his moustaches in boredom. "They are one of our top clients."

"I do understand that," Anne nodded, "but there was one transaction that took place at a particularly opportune time."

"I'm not certain what you mean by opportune time," Kuyuglu perked up with interest.

"Allow me to refresh you," Anne said as she pulled out a series of reports that Wolsey had clipped for her from various newspapers three days and laid them out on the table.

Kuyuglu picked them up, examined them over his golden-rimmed spectacles, and then passed them back to her.

"I'm sorry, Miss Boleyn, but I cannot comment on this. Company policy."

"I know," Anne said putting the articles away, "but would it be possible for you to say something on this matter off the record as a private person rather than as a representative of the Bank of Ankara?"

"Impossible," Kuyuglu crossed his arms. "You are wasting your time, Miss Boleyn."

"I promise you full and absolute anonymity, Mr. Kuyuglu. No one will ever know."

"Miss Boleyn," Kuyuglu addressed her sternly and rose from the table. "I cannot tell you anything. I'm sorry."

"Mr. Kuyuglu, my job depends on this story."

"And my head depends on not saying anything," Kuyuglu retorted. "Goodbye, Miss Boleyn."

"How much money do you want?" Anne blurted out without thinking.

"Excuse me?" Kuyuglu turned around and faced her. "Money?"

"Yes," Anne nodded. "How much money do you want for your anonymity? I'm willing to pay for it. I have my ways."

"$10,000," Kuyuglu replied suddenly reassured and calmed. "Have it wired to my bank by tomorrow afternoon and I will tell you everything."


End file.
